Quiltmaker's Blog tour - 100 Designer Blocks Vol. 14

Block # 1359                Conduit

      Welcome to my blog for volume 14 of Quiltmaker’s 100 Designer Blocks blog tour. This is my block. I named it “Conduit”. I’ll explain how I developed this block using my trusty Electric Quilt software in this blog. I will be sending one lucky blogger a free copy of Volume 14 at the end of the tour. If you would like to be that lucky person you need to do two things, please visit my Facebook page and click on the “Like” and also leave a comment below. If you have already “Liked” my page then just leave a comment below. I will remind you what you have to do again at the end. Monday, November 21 at 12:00 midnight is the deadline. P.S. if you don't do Facebook, you'll still be included. Just tack that fact onto your comment that you leave below.

Congratulations to Barb Y. of California! I hope you find a lot of inspiration in this issue.
And a big thank you to everyone who visited and left a comment! I'm glad you enjoyed my block and my explanation.

The idea for this block came from my love of switching around the traditional value mapping of familiar blocks. I love Flying Goose units. They’re incredibly versatile to work with. By changing the value placement your ideas can travel into many different directions. I started with the Dutchmen’s Puzzle block shown below.

I handled the block like it was a four patch and rotated some of the double goose units. Next I changed the placement of the values to create a block that would tessellate with its neighboring blocks to create an endless tiling pattern.

Now it was time to choose the colors I would like to work with. I was feeling a bit psychedelic so I chose some stimulating colors for the unit. Here’s the block with the colors I chose.

First I used the block in a horizontal tile setting using the grey scale block. Then I plugged in the colored block to see what it would look like.

Then I played around with making it a bit more complicated. I wondered what the quilt would look like if I added alternate block coloring to the layout, below on the left result. I wondered what would happen if the values changed progressively through the design. This is the design on the right, below.

Going back to my first value map of the block I then wondered what would the quilt look like set on point. Here is the result in grey scale and in color.

I looked through the JPEG swatches in my EQ program for some blender and tonal fabrics to use in my design. On the left below, is an example of what it would look like with blenders from Quilting Treasures Fabrics. Next I needed to find fabrics in my stash to use in the block. Next I printed out the specification sheet from my EQ program, below right.

I took the image with me to look through my stash to see what would match the colors in my image as I imagined it. I started with the violet fabrics first. I needed one cool violet and the other needed to be a warm violet.

I found the two purples and now it was time to find the right green.
Flowing from left to right you can follow my process.

Now that I had my violets and my green it was time to look for the perfect red fabric to compliment the other colors.
At first I thought that I needed a true red color but when I looked at the violets and the green with the reds, I didn’t feel that they were the right match.

So I tried the very deep pink colors I have in my stash. These pink colors are so deep and saturated that they almost are like a red but they have a little more excitement to them. I really like the way these looked and on the right, below, is the one I chose from the box.

Now it was time to spec out the individual Flying Geese units that I needed to make.  After sewing up all the units and joining them together I was really pleased with the result!

I hope you enjoyed this blog post. Don’t forget visit my Facebook page (if you do FB) and click the “Like” button and also to leave a comment below. If you have already “Liked” my Facebook page then just leave a comment below. Do one or both of these things and you could be the lucky winner of a free copy of Volume 14 at the end of the tour. Monday, November 21 at 12:00 midnight is the deadline.